This past weekend we found out my friend's mom is in ICU and unresponsive (nonresponsive?). She's not doing well at all so we're praying for her and trying to support our friend.
We also found out my mother was in fact diagnosed with stage one cancer and will be meeting with her team soon to nail down a surgery date and follow-up treatment. (I do not feel old enough to deal with this.) This also means our family dynamics continue.
CC's got some work stuff going on, other stuff is going on, and it's just been a crazy weekend. So of course I channeled all of that into baking this weekend, as promised.
I ended up spending every free minute baking and cleaning the kitchen umpteen thousand times. I made a total of four batches of macarons, none of which came out right. I will say since I can follow a recipe pretty well, each batch tasted REALLY yummy. The texture is what's so difficult to get right, which is why I'm not giving up. Seriously nobody makes these anywhere in the Triangle which is a problem to me. This is the only reason I've gone bonkers trying to make them. Feel free to send help, therapy sessions, whatever.
I started with the two recipes I mentioned last week- one from the Everyday Food blog (aka Martha herself) and another that CC found and wanted me to try. There are hundreds of recipes to choose from, so since I had to start somewhere, I went with these two. If I can't find success with these I might try another one.
The first thing is you can't just spontaneously throw a batch of these together. You need to use 'old' eggs and leave them out overnight to get to true room temperature.
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Eggy eggy eggs! |
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This better be worth it! |
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The good stuff. |
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Ooh la la! |
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Tasting... |
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First batch- plain almond macaron with vanilla buttercream filling |
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See the air pockets? That's very bad. We just threw these away. |
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Pretty and tasty, but I can't seem to nail the texture |
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Tastes like fudge pie! |
The saving graces here are that they're still delicious even if they're wrong, and Hubby's being VERY supportive while I work this out. It's sweet when your hubby supports your obsession! And has he ever been supportive! All the buttercream fillings you see here were handmade by CC- we found out he's got superskillz when it comes to buttercream. His pistachio is especially delicious!
I'll keep you posted on how this turns out! For more photos, check out #thegreatmacaronexperimentof2013 on Instagram. I've been photobombing my feed with this experiment all weekend. I feel bad for my poor friends who have to scroll past them all, but I'm having fun so it continues.
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Pistachio and chocolate macaron test batches going to work! |
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